A Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Draft Resolutions for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Attitude Towards the Bourgeois Parties

(1)theSocial-Democratic Party has always recognised the necessity of
    supporting every opposition and revolutionary movement against the existing
    social and political system in Russia;

(2)atthe present time, when the revolution is bringing various classes into
    open action, thus stimulating the formation of political parties, it is
    the urgent duty of the Social-Democratic Party to ascertain the class
    character of these parties, to appraise the present relations between the
    classes, and to determine its own attitude to the various parties
    accordingly;

(3)themain task of the working class at the present stage of the democratic
    revolution is to carry it to its completion and therefore, in determining
    its attitude towards the other parties, the Social-Democratic Party must
    particularly take into account the extent to which each party is capable of
    actively promoting this object;

(4)fromthis point of view, all existing non-Social-Democratic parties in
    Russia (bar the reactionary parties) may bedivided into two main groups: liberal-monarchist parties and
      revolutionary-democratic parties;

Weare of the opinion, and propose that the Congress should agree:

(1)thatthe Right liberal-monarchist parties (the Union of October
Seventeenth, the Party of Law and Order, the Commercial and Industrial
Party,[1]etc.) represent the class organisations of the landlords and
the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie and are openly
counter-revolutionary, but have not yet made a final deal with the autocratic
bureaucracy on sharing power; that the party of the proletariat, while taking
advantage of this conflict which is still in progress, must at the same time
wage a relentless struggle against these parties;

(2)thatthe Left liberal-monarchist parties (the Party of Democratic
Reforms,[2]the Constitutional-Democratic Party, etc.), not being
    definitely class organisations, are constantly vacillating between the
    democratic petty bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary elements of the
    big bourgeoisie, between the desire to lean on the people and fear of its
    independent revolutionary activity, and aim at nothing that goes beyond the
    limits of a well-ordered bourgeois society protected from the encroachments
    of the proletariat by a monarchy and a two-chamber system; and that the
    Social-Democratic Party must utilise the activities of these parties for the
    political education of the people, counteract their hypocritical democratic
    phrase-mongering by the consistent democracy of the proletariat, and
    ruthlessly expose the constitutional illusions they spread;

(3)thatthe revolutionary-democratic parties and organisations (the
    Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the Peasant Union, some of the semi-trade
    union and semi-political organisations, etc.) most closely express the
    interests and point of view of the broad masses of the peasantry and petty
    bourgeoisie, strongly opposing landlordism and the semi-feudal state,
    consistently striving for democracy and clothing their virtually
    bourgeois-democratic aims in a more or less nebulous socialist ideology; and
    that the Social-Democratic Party deems it possible and necessary to enter
    into fighting agreements with these parties, while at the same time
    systematically exposing their pseudo-socialist character andcombating their attempts to obscure the class antithesis between the
proletarian and the small proprietor;

(4)thatthe immediate political object of such temporary fighting agreements
    between the Social-Democratic Party and the revolutionary democrats is to
    secure the convocation by revolutionary means of a constituent assembly of
    the whole people with full powers, on the basis of universal, direct and
    equal suffrage by secret ballot;

(5)thattemporary fighting agreements are possible and advisable at the present
    time only with those elements which recognise armed uprising as a means of
    struggle and are actually assisting to bring it about.

[1]TheCommercial and Industrial Party—a
counter-revolutionary party of big capitalists, founded in Moscow after the
publication of the Manifesto of October 17 (30), 1905. Its founders were
G. A. Krestovnikov, V. P. Ryabushinsky and other big capitalists. The party,
which proclaimed itself a supporter of the October Manifesto, insisted on the
establishment of a strong government authority to put down the revolutionary
movement. It opposed the convocation of a constituent assembly, nationalisation
of the land, the introduction of an eight-hour working day, and freedom to
strike. It formed a bloc with the Octobrists in the elections to the First
Duma. It disintegrated at the close of 1906, most of its members joining the
Union of October Seventeenth.

[2]TheParty of Democratic Reforms—a party of
the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie founded early in 1906, during the elections
to the First Duma, by elements who considered the Cadet programme too
leftist. Among its more prominent leaders were K. K. Arsenyev, I. I. Ivanyukov,
M. M. Kovalevsky, V. D. Kuzmin-Karavayev and A. S. Posnikov. Lacking a solid
basis as it did, the Party had gone out of existence by the end of 1907.